Cycle of Ragnarok
by MonstrousRegiment
Summary: On a hot sumemr Lousiana night, Eric does some quiet contemplation.


Soooo, this is my first Southern Vampire Series one-shot. First fanfiction at all really. It's set between DAG and DITF because I wrote it back then and I only just rediscovered it today, and I was too lazy to update the concepts. I have to admit I was a little too in love with my wording to change everything.

I hope you enjoy.

* * *

He had come to the forest seeking out the calmness of human absence. Humans were noisy creatures, with their raucous lungs and beating hearts, the pumping of their blood through their delicate-walled veins whispering beneath their skins.

Eric enjoyed humans, usually. He found them amusing. He liked studying them, and if they were women, he liked touching them.

But they jaded him, too, with their endless meaningless worries and pointless battles, their petty vengeances and jealousies.

Eric missed the days of old, when a misunderstanding could be fixed with the sharp edge of a sword's blade. It was direct and simple, and bore no repercussions if the fight was fair. He reveled in politics now, and in the pawn-play of his high position, but sometimes it lost its shine, and he missed the chance to clean out decapitate the ones that irritated him.

And irritations were plenty and close between.

These times in which battle was considered a sin were an irritation by themselves. Eric, son of leaders, human and otherwise, understood power play. Wars nowadays were merely that. He understood and accepted that, and did not entertain himself regretting the unavoidable loss of human lives.

And he did think it was a loss. Centuries had passed him like water passes a rock in a stream, changing him with a slow but gentle persistence, and he had seen the human race evolve, and was always fascinated by its talent, its eager exuberance. He had seen carriages become sports cars, and had seen the birth of planes sailing the skies. He was a watcher, a student of human nature, and found he was always learning something new.

He crouched down and let his elbows rest on his thighs, relaxed, enjoying the night. He liked this Louisiana summer night, warm humid weather and soft gentle breeze, and smells of sun clinging to the trees and the grass beneath his boots. He reached between his legs and ruffled the grass as it were some boy's hair, and smiled at the sharpening of the scent.

For a moment, he felt transported back to the old days, when he liked to run at full speed through the open, snow covered fields of his father's domain alongside his brothers, under the barely-warming morning sunlight. He almost felt the crunch of the snow under his skin boots, the sharp sting of the cold air in his lungs as he breathed quickly, the bubbly sensation of laughter in his stomach and throat.

A gentle buzzing drew him out of his memories, and he reached the back pocket if his jeans and took out his cell phone, glancing quickly at the screen. It was Pam. He ignored the call, and thrust it back in his pocket. He did not wish to be disturbed with modern marvels at this moment.

Eric wasn't a creature given to nostalgia, and while he did miss the old ways when it came to some matters, he was pragmatic above all. Cell phones and sports cars and airplanes had all taken turns making his existence a hundred times easier. He appreciated the practical uses of all of them, but he held no love for any. They added so much noise to the atmosphere, and sometimes alienated their users more than helped to communicate them. Eric didn't text; if he had something to say, he called.

He sat back on the grass and braced his weight on his long arms, throwing his head back to stare at the sky.

Two nights before, Sookie had sat back in her lawn chair and stared up at the velvety Louisiana sky.

_Do you know the constellations?_ She's asked.

_Some of them._

He had to strain his memory a little to remember the modern names matching the Norse constellations. The Great Bear or Ursa Majoris, which as a child he had named Great Wagon or Wain, shone bright in the summer night sky. It was Odin's wagon, out of which he looked down towards the land of mortal men, when he left the halls and squares of Asgard, the City of Gods.

He amused himself by remembering those days in which he firmly believed, without a doubt, that the destiny of men and women was written in stone; that Valkyries seared the skies in winged horses, armed and ferocious. That the thunder that broke across the skies in stormy nights was born in Thor's hammer and his anger as he stroke down upon a giant of ice.

_I only know Orion_, Sookie had said, drawing him back from within the layers of dusty, rusted past and into the modern times, where a porch light behind him spilt electric light down unto the grass and a radio sang a song by an author whose name he forgot.

_It's the constellation of the Three Kings_, she had added.

He'd looked up, _Three Kings of what?_

Sookie blinked, _Jesus' three Kings? That's actually s good question. I wonder if it's a Catholic thing_.

To repeat something that you are told, and not know why it so, was something Eric strongly disapproved of. Humans and their easily lead minds. A spoken word should not necessarily be a word of truth. Taking things at face value was a perilous flaw, one that Eric expected Sookie to have long lost.

He thought of Bill and the Queen's orders, and of Niall and his people and the scars of half-healed bites on Sookie's silken skin, and the way she drew away from his touch the night before, muttering an apology and feeling like she was failing him.

The feeling of guilt and inadequacy were running rampant lately. He certainly felt them, sinking deep and sharp into his heart every time Sookie forgot to pretend she wasn't limping anymore. She also seemed to have forgotten Eric could feel her pain through their bond, but Eric was to the date unsure of whether that had anything to do with how focused she was on her own pain or if it had anything to do with her very obvious dislike of the connection.

He'd given up trying to get her to understand that the bond wasn't an artificial link, but a living, natural connection. It was just as hard or perhaps harder than getting her to accept that he was with her because he'd chosen to be with her and not because it represented a serious of very interesting bonuses.

Sookie exhibited what Eric thought was one of the most annoying human traits. She thought she was a good person, and though Eric couldn't exactly disagree (on the bases that he was no one to judge on good or bad people—mainly because good or bad meant nothing to him anymore) her deep-rooted belief brought on an endless litany of unpleasant consequences. Sookie wanted to believe herself reasonable and rational, but the truth of the matter was she used her catholic upbringing as a shield behind which to hide. She'd been brought up well, in such a way as a catholic girl can be brought up, and thus her judgment on things was to be trusted as correct and accurate.

Eric disagreed on the ground of having quite a few centuries' more of experience, but it was no matter. In Sookie's mind, Eric was almost always either plotting her (or Bill's, or whoever's turn it was) demise, or simply fundamentally wrong. It didn't look like his thousand years of surviving counted as any kind of valuable background.

Maybe it was because he was very clearly not Catholic, he thought wryly.

Eric knew little of the Catholic religion; he had seen it grow and reach with thin black fingers out across the continents and seas, had seen it creep under the skin of the weak of faith and turn them inside out. In centuries of life, Eric had realized there were no Gods ruling the lives of mortal men. This however did not mean he was sure Gods didn't exist; if anything, given his circumstances, he should be quite certain they likely _did_. He was a creature of nightmares, constructed with shadows and magic and kept alive by unknown wills and forces that did not quite belong with Nature. Maybe Thor had stroked down a lightening for him, and kept his life tied to the Earth; maybe Frigg had chosen him to remain in the Miðgarðr, the world of humans.

He didn't think he had a particular purpose in life. If the Gods had indeed chosen him to remain on this Earth, then there was no telling why; Gods were whimsical creatures, often childish and impulsive. They broke their vows, declared wars that wiped out hundreds of human lives with no sign of noticeable remorse, and took for themselves whichever they desired.

_Well, _he thought ironically, _that's what Sookie always says you do. Maybe you're a God_.

The wind changed, and carried to him the scents of fur and musk and fresh animal blood. A pack of wolves paused in the woods, far away enough that their heartbeats blended together and made it impossible for him to count them out individually. He tilted his head and tracked their advance with his hearing; they were coming close.

Wolves were creatures Eric had great respect for. As a child in the frozen lands his father ruled, wolves had been a real, frightening danger. They could round a tall man and kill him in minutes, exhausting him in a drawn out battle for survival. Warriors had gone down in such a way, good strong men that had killed a dozen men.

As a child, Eric had revered Odin and Thor. They represented everything a man should be, fighting for his family and protecting his people. Eric could have lived to inherit his father's duties as the leader of their warriors, and he'd been taught to hold the welfare of his people before everything else. He'd carried that belief for decades, holding it up in the forefront of his mind like a beacon lightening his way.

But then he died, and the Valkyries never came to fetch him, and there was no rainbow-bridge for him to walk, no gates for him to go through into the wide halls of the Vallhalla, to wait as an Einherjar until Ragnarok came and Odin called to them for the battle.

There was just his Maker, stealing him in the dead of the night and drinking his life away. The next couple of decades were a blurred sequence of violence and aggression and trying to keep out of the reach of sunlight and angry mobs with pitchforks and stakes. Which, point of interest, had actually been a rather common occurrence back in the day. Eric had run from one in at least two occasions.

Disillusionment stung. He'd acted accordingly to the code of honor his father and his forefathers before him had followed, and when the time came Odin didn't even spare him a glance.

His beliefs didn't prove as useful when it came to keeping himself alive as a vampire. His Maker taught him many things, but in the end his survival was up to him, and Thor's way didn't prove pragmatically viable.

He'd become a predator, a hunter; a wolf. Loki's child.

He spun lies and tricks and put out traps like a spider waves a net.

And he got what he wanted.

One thing Eric found amusing of the younger vampires was the existentialist drama they seemed to carry around like cloaks. He was what he was; he could be no more, and no less. The stars and the moon suited him well, so much so he had no time to spare for melancholy for the sun and a bright blue sky.

There was only one possession he envied the day, and it was Sookie.

A crow hawked nearby. He turned his head and found it in the shadow of the tree's foliage. Sunlight slid over his glossy black feathers like liquid silver, and a round black eye stared at him.

He almost said, 'Say nevermore,' but figured the crow would try and pick an eye out of his skull if he did.

He smiled at the thought, and laid back on the grass and stretched out his long body.

Sookie belonged to the Sun; it was waved into her being, braided with her spirit. She was Baldur's child. Baldur Odinson was truth and light. He was always the first to die in the never-ending cycle of Ragnarok. Because without truth and light, there cannot be life.

Though that was debatable, Eric thought dryly. _He_ was living, without truth _or_ light.

Whatever time he and Sookie spent together was a stolen season, snatched out from under Odin's long nose. And Sookie was a transient being, visiting Earth for a short while before returning to the light that had animated the flesh of her body. There was a little magic in her, but not enough to tie her down to the world to keep him company. Her magic was different from his, all white light and warmth and truth.

She was never his, never would be.

She didn't wish to be a vampire, didn't want to live forever. She wanted children and a normal life soaking in the sun in the afternoons off work. She wanted a husband that could help provide for her family, and to live in Bon Temps and have her kids go to the same school she had attended.

She forgot things. She forgot she'd taken his blood and shared his bed, she forgot she was bonded with him now, that they were one being broken in half. They were a part of each other. If he died, she would mourn like only a lover can mourn; and _when_ she died—

What?

He'd mourn and let the sun take him?

He scoffed.

It was vampires like Bill Compton, sad little things that wept and mourned the things they lost instead of seeing the things they had or could take in time, that let the sun take them to end their 'misery'.

Sookie would die.

He would live.

Such was the mortal way.

He had no doubt it would hurt, but he didn't delude himself into believing he had a romance-novel relationship with her either. Some nights he thought the affection he felt for her would split his heart, and some nights he wondered if he ought to outright kill her and spare himself the irritation. He wasn't the kind of naïve creature that could be blinded by love, and neither was Sookie.

Not anymore, anyway.

She wanted things he could not give her.

And he just wanted. Wanted everything. Anything. He didn't even know anymore.

He didn't try to decipher it anymore either. They were together, as a female and a male can be. As together a vampire and human can ever come to be, in any case.

And the truth of the matter was, it wasn't enough. It never would be. They could tell themselves they loved each other—though they hadn't told _one another_—and hope for the best, believe things would work themselves out somehow and the Universe would twist itself to accommodate their singular situation.

Or perhaps _she_ could. Though after the affair with the fairies, it was unlikely.

Eric certainly couldn't.

He remembered a verse he'd heard from the mouth of an English actor in a musty old theatre in London centuries ago: _These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness; and in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so. Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow_.

He turned on his side and propped his weight up on his elbow, looking at the stars from the corner of his eye.

"Why is it that love is always a tragedy?" he murmured, and surprised himself.

He'd never quite used that word aloud. Not in English, anyway.

He sat up and crossed his legs, arching a brow. He ruffled his long hair, undoing the braid carelessly.

Maybe there was no such thing as happy endings.

He smiled.

There is no such thing as _endings_, at all. If anything, he was proof of _that_.

His life didn't have story-shape. There was no beginning, plot and ending for him. An icy mountaintop would melt and form a creek, and the creek would become a river and sink itself into a canyon, and finally dry out and die, and he would still be walking the world when the memory of Sookie became ashes in his mind.

Empires had risen and fallen in his lifetime.

All this he told himself. They didn't belong together. She would die. He couldn't make her happy.

And still, the more he thought on it all, the more he felt that yanking, that pull to get into his car and drive at break-neck speed (it was what humans called _very fast_, though he disagreed; he'd broken his neck three times and it wasn't anything tragic, and he could outrun his car's speed limit easily) to get to her house and share her bed.

And he had no one to blame for but himself, and obviously Sookie.

He'd long since stopped feeling angry at the connection, at the feelings they shared. Anger and resentment had led him nowhere.

He'd staid as far away from her as he possibly could on more than one occasion, only to find himself flying right back to her at the smallest sign of danger or the vaguest invitation, using the most preposterous excuses to see her, speak to her_, touch her_.

At some point in the road they'd become tied to one another. Before even he formed the bond, before he married them. The first time he'd seen her he'd wanted her and since then his desire had not waned, though other emotions had certainly masked it occasionally—anger, resentment, reluctance and prudence. He'd rationalized his affection—but that didn't matter anymore.

They were a doomed love story with an unhappy, unsatisfying ending.

She would die. There was no helping it.

He wouldn't forcefully turn her any more than he would rape her.

Once you accepted the tragedy of it, Eric supposed, there was some peace to be found in the inevitability of her death. Eric's practical mind did not allow for him to dwell on things he could not change or prevent.

His phone started buzzing again. With a long-suffering sigh, he reached into his pocket and took it out.

"Pam."

"The police is raiding the bar. We need you here."

"Twenty minutes," he answered, and hung up.

He let the phone fall on the grass between his legs and laced his long fingers, resting his elbows on his knees. All he wanted was one night of peace, and it appeared to be too much to ask of the fates. Human police raids were hardly an annoyance; they never found what they were looking for because they didn't have the necessary sharpness of senses. But it seemed to sooth the humans to be able to lay eyes on the owner of the establishment they were rifling through, and Eric relished the possibility to make them uncomfortable with his size and ease of movement.

Eric was a tall, big man, and intimidation came as easily to him as flight.

A sound of a twig snapping made him turn to his right as his senses shot outwards in a wide sweeping circle, scanning the area.

He saw the green-grey disc of the moonlight colliding with the wolf's eye, and became very still, very quiet. The wolf lowered its great head, sniffing the air with careful mistrust, and gave a tentative step forward. Its lips drew off its long canines, but there was no accompanying growl. He was testing the air, testing Eric.

The Viking prince imitated the invitation, baring his fangs with an exhalation of cold breath.

The wolf's ear stood up fast, alert but nor alarmed.

"Hello, brothers," Eric said quietly, tracking with his hearing the heartbeats of all the wolves that had surrounded him.

He, too, was now Loki's child. And the wolves were his family as surely as Pam.

In the cycle of Ragnarok, Loki engineered Baldur's death over and over, bringing forth the end of light and truth before the word fell into chaos and finally plunged into darkness.

_The son becomes the father, and the father becomes the son_, Eric thought as the alpha male grew cautiously closer, sniffing at the foreign predator in front of it without fear.

Eric knew he would be the end of Sookie's life. Though she was yet to understand, Eric knew he was bound to her until the end of one of them, and her demise was much closer in theory than his. He'd seen the sun rise in the Roman empire, and would see it set behind the ruins of western civilization. She would live no longer than at most, perhaps, ninety years. More, if she were to regularly accept his blood. But eventually Eric knew she would grow reluctant. She would age. She would die.

Baldur always died.

The wolf was close enough now that Eric could feel the heat coming off its hide and floating in the air between them. Carefully, ever so slowly, he raised his right hand and offered the wolf his knuckles to sniff. The animal did, and for a moment seemed confused before giving another step and allowing Eric's hand to gently pet his neck.

From the feel of the taught, corded muscles and tendons beneath the fur and skin, Eric could feel the raw strength of the animal. Underneath that strength he sensed the barely-there tremor of hunger unsatisfied. The pack had not hunted tonight. The animal was weary.

"A rough night all around, brother," he murmured, his quiet vice carrying far in the silence of the thick-aired summer night.

The wolf's topaz-like eyes shimmered.

"Perhaps…" Eric mused, gripping the wolf's fur and giving it a light tug.

Vivid images of nights of savage release broke across his mind like a delicate glass splintering on wood. The chase across the expanse of a tree-filled forest, the smell of fear and blood and adrenaline painting the air and filling his lung. Thick blood spilling down his throat and on his chin.

He heard a sound far away in the forest, his senses fanning out already in the building excitement of hunt.

"Yes," he decided, rising to a crouch. He brought the alpha wolf closer, throwing an arm around its neck and pressing its long snout to his cheek.

"Let us hunt, Lokisons."

In the end, he didn't make it to the raid. By the time he was back in Fangtasia!, the only one that remained at the bar was a very annoyed Pam, with arched brows and judge-ready eyes. Her expression didn't change in the slightest as her master walked into the bar, shirtless and fare-footed, covered in mud and splattered in animal blood. She could see the marks of paws along his broad shoulders and in spots in his chest.

"Have a nice night out? You needn't worry about us. We had it all under control. I'm beginning to believe you are quite obsolete."

Eric grinned, still fueled by the delight of the hunt, and run his hand through his matted blond hair. He found a twig, and pulled it out.

Pam relented, sighing. "Did you at least find whatever you were looking for?"

"I've reached no other conclusion tonight, other than dwelling in what you can't change won't get you anywhere."

"You knew that already. Reiteration is not elaboration."

"Sometimes I find making a decision over and over makes it easier to tolerate the consequences that decision will chain you to."

Pam gazed at him with too-intelligent eyes, and finally nodded.

"Sookie called," she threw over her shoulder as she turned around to get her purse. "She says if you miss out on dinner tomorrow, she is buying herself a silver choker."

Eric chuckled under his breath, even though what he really wanted to do was groan.

Dinner with Jason Stackhouse was not the most amusing thing he could think of. In fact, there was a long and through list of the things he would rather be doing with his sister, and most of them included different levels of technical difficulty and creativity.

Eric was nothing if not creative.

After all, creativity was Loki's most treasured ability.

* * *

Yeah. I know it kind of reaches no conclusion, but it was just an excercise, and an attempto to get Eric out of my skull.

(Failed.)

MR


End file.
